


soon i shall start moving again, and perhaps i will never stop

by attheborder



Category: The Terror (TV 2018)
Genre: Alternate Universe - 1960s, California, M/M, Motorcycles, Recreational Drug Use, Strength Kink, beat poetry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-04
Updated: 2020-10-04
Packaged: 2021-03-07 16:07:41
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,491
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26820376
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/attheborder/pseuds/attheborder
Summary: Speeding along in Sol’s wake on the great Highway 1 that hugs the coast of California like a hot black ribbon, Tommy feels suspended above all things, gloriously untouchable.
Relationships: Thomas Armitage/Sgt Solomon Tozer
Comments: 10
Kudos: 29





	soon i shall start moving again, and perhaps i will never stop

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Poose](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Poose/gifts).



**Humboldt County, 1960**

The further they get from it, the more the city seems like something they’d dreamed up together. Victorian houses and suspension bridges and cigarette stubs and cars crawling up crooked streets all fade away. That there could be anything other than this—the road flashing by, the wind in his hair, and, keeping pace before him, Sol on his sleek BMW R69, shining chrome and red—seems impossible to Tommy. 

Speeding along in Sol’s wake on the great Highway 1 that hugs the coast of California like a hot black ribbon, Tommy feels suspended above all things, gloriously untouchable. 

The Central YMCA in the Tenderloin had been Tommy’s haunt for some time; with no green card he could not be paid for work, but after a fair bit of debased pleading with the building manager he’d been granted room and board in exchange for a few janitorial shifts a week, cleaning the gym and the locker room. 

It had been but two weeks on the job the day he’d watched a man with burnished gold hair and tanned skin squat and lift what had to be over 500 pounds. He’d rested for a few minutes, leaning against the rack; then, easy as anything, he’d done it again.

Tommy had been embarrassed to be caught staring. But then the man had walked right up to him—slightly bow-legged, possessed of a charming swagger—and asked, “Is that a new record here, d’you think?” 

He was an Englishman as well: from Liverpool, going off his easily identifiable lilt as they drifted easily into conversation. Tommy had needed to beg off to continue his shift but Solomon had come back the next day, drawing a crowd of curious regulars around him as he lifted those immense weights, every inch of him engaged, gleaming with exertion. Tommy tried very hard not to stare this time, busying himself with his mop and bucket—but could not help glancing up just the once, and found to his surprise that Sol, this time, was looking right at him.

Soon after in Tommy’s tiny room on the fourth floor of the Y Sol had pulled from his pocket a bag full of blue pills. “You ever tried these before?”

Mutely, Tommy shook his head. Held out his hand, accepted the gifts. Washed them down with water and waited—and since then, he is sure, he has not come down. It has been an ascension, into heights previously unknown. 

He’d been worried, before. About money. About being far from home. About the way he looked, the way he sounded, the way he was. He had come to San Francisco because a man in Amsterdam, after showing Tommy for the first time what it was like to be fucked, had told him it was a place where men like them could find others, could find something as close to happiness as God would allow— but the worries had not lessened when he’d arrived; he perhaps had been stupid to believe that they would. They were heavy worries, weighing him down. He had begun to assume they would drag him all the way back to Kent, sooner or later, and he would be back where he’d started. 

But then there was Solomon. 

Sol is a Scouser, a Dingle man, a wacker, a laborer, the son of a boilermaker who was the son of a boilermaker and so on, going back a century or more. He would skive off from school to watch the ships being built in the dockyards and count down the days until he could board one himself, and say goodbye to the steel skies and steel river and find himself somewhere green and blue. 

He started training back home and has kept it up wherever he’s found himself on his travels; he can lift hundreds of pounds now; he can carry Tommy, pick him up like he weighs nothing, him and all his worries besides. 

It is evening now, and they have stopped riding, and found a place beside the road to camp. Mars burns bright beside the moon—Mars the masculine, Mars the militant, Mars the red-hot and strong—and Sol reads aloud, his voice rising above the crackle and hiss of the fire: 

_“... who let themselves be fucked in the ass by saintly motorcyclists, and screamed with joy … who blew and were blown by those human seraphim, the sailors, caresses of Atlantic and Caribbean love …”_

Once, Tommy had been a sailor. Not anymore—but he’d learned how to suck cock on one of Her Majesty’s Ships, and hasn’t forgotten. Sol loves it when he takes him into his mouth still soft and lets him stiffen there on his tongue before he starts; loves it when Tommy moans around his cock with each deep thrust in. 

Tommy could be content to ride next to Sol, racing each other to the Oregon border and back again in time for Tommy’s shift on Monday. He could be content with watching Sol’s thighs flex under his leathers, watching his callused fingers turn the pages of his book, hearing the words of the Beats in his Merseyside lilt until the sun rises. 

But soon they each wash down a handful of blue pills with more beer until they feel as if they are flying and then, underneath the light of Mars, in amongst the grand and silent redwoods, Sol lifts Tommy onto his lap and fucks him, tirelessly and endlessly, the speed crashing through them in exultant, celebratory waves. 

This morning they’d stopped on the side of the road so that Tommy could take some pictures with his new camera: of the waves beating onto the cliffs far below, of the birds wheeling above against the sheer curtains of the high summer clouds, of Sol crouched next to his bike, fiddling with the engine, his toolkit spread open beside him on the tarmac. 

He still smells like motor oil now, like the unrusted steel of his wrenches. Tommy’s lungs fill with it when he buries his head in the crook of Sol’s neck, as Sol pulls him off with one warm, willing hand curled about his prick and the other carding softly through his hair, murmuring: “Just like that, Tommy—I’ve got you, I’ve got you.” 

Eventually they're curled up on Sol’s spread sleeping bag, one of Tommy’s skinny arms slung over Sol’s wide chest. It had surprised Tommy, at first, how Sol liked to be held after. It had seemed unusual—but then so much of Sol is unexpected, unusual. The way he knows his favorite poems off by heart—the way he writes his own, sometimes, on the backs of maps and diner receipts, hands them to Tommy under the table—the way the California sun turns him into something godlike, his hair to spun gold and his eyes to opal. The way he seems to fear nothing and no one at all. 

Stopping at a gas station sometimes they’ll see a family, piling out of their Oldsmobile, the mother and her A-line skirt and perfectly heat-set hair, her husband with his crew cut and plaid shirt buttoned all the way up. The mother—Betsy or Beverly or Barbara—will spot Sol and Tommy, and her face will tighten with banked disgust, and she’ll pull her two red-cheeked, towheaded children closer, herd them away from the men with the motorcycles, whispering warnings into their ears. _Stay away from them. They’re perverts, they’re sinners, they’re dangerous._

This used to frighten Tommy: being seen for what he is; being known and judged by those who do not know him, and never will. 

But with Sol by his side it’s different. He bursts with pride. He wants to beckon those little boys over and speak kindly to them: _This is who we are. Do you see our bikes? Do you see our leather jackets, the patches on them? Do you see the shine of our sunglasses, the length of our hair? Do you see how close we stand, the way we look at each other with love? You are allowed to want this. It is a beautiful thing._

They have plans to ride south, to Los Angeles, to visit the legendary Muscle Beach. Tommy will take photographs of Sol as he lifts, of the admirers that will soon gather round, to watch the broad Englishman with the massive arms break half the standing records on the board. After that perhaps they’ll make it down to Baja California, or maybe east to the Grand Canyon, which Tommy longs to see. They’ll take the empty state routes at a hundred miles per hour and stop only to sleep and fuck and take more pills. 

“You really think you’ll make fighter pilot?” Tommy asks. Sol is due in Canada soon, to start his national service with the Royal Canadian Air Force.

“I better,” says Sol. “They go so fast, Tommy. You wouldn’t believe.” 

***

**Author's Note:**

> this story owes a massive debt of inspiration to Dr. Oliver Sacks' incredible autobiography _On The Move_ — the title is a direct quote. i also reread the Ringo Starr bits in Mark Lewisohn's _Tune In_ and plucked out a few choice details for Sol's backstory. 
> 
> i'm on [tumblr](http://areyougonnabe.tumblr.com) and [twitter!](http://twitter.com/areyougonnabe)
> 
> PS yall seen [david walmsley's arms?](https://www.whatsonstage.com/s/wos-photos-production/137312.jpg)


End file.
